Ah, Steam. The software distribution system Valve created so they could issue small and quick episodic content to Half-Life 2 easily and often. So they only did it twice and have left that game rot for 7 years.Gabe should have SteamOS shined up and ready for the Linux mouthbreathers sometime around 2027.

But, Ballmer's out and Gates is apparently taking a closer personal interest in the company.

I've not used a Windows 8 device, and, to be honest, the advertising campaign raised red flags. It suggested that Windows 8 would provide the same experience on all devices. And that's farking stupid. I don't want my desktop computer to have the same interface as my mobile phone.

Apple did have a thing going on for a little bit, where they emphasised that the iPhone ran OS X, but they got their shiat together and renamed their mobile OS iOS.

Yeah, I'm providing no sources, but I've also heard that MS intends to put 8 behind it ASAP, and move on to 9. But, it's always been the way with MS, hasn't it? Vista was dogshiat, Windows 7 was usable.

/Was is not MS-DOS 4.0 that used to wipe out your sexy 100 Mb hard drive for no reason?

redmid17:syrynxx: Kahabut: syrynxx: Kahabut: Can you make anything remotely resembling an argument for why 64 bit workstations are an improvement? In what use case?

32-bit OSen can only address 4 GB of RAM. By default, Windows assigns 2GB to application space and 2GB for the OS. You could tweak it with things like /3GB on the startup line for apps like Exchange that needed more application memory, but then this bites into reserved pools for OS operations.

WTF are you doing running exchange on a WORKSTATION?

Fail, next attempt?

Do you have a special font on your computer? The part where I apparently claimed to be running Exchange on a workstation isn't showing up on mine.

To be fair, he did ask specifically about 64-bit workstations. To be even more fair, several people have given him several specific examples to which he has not responded. Running an Exchange server, especially now, on a 32-bit vs a 64-bit version of Windows would be a folly.

If I'm reading the pacing of this thread correctly, the moron in question may not actually be aware that 2K was a server OS as well as a workstation one.

Meaning, he's completely unaware of the NT code-based server OS that spawned AD and the workstation OS that came with it, and the entirety of the Windows servers that followed.

Ah, Steam. The software distribution system Valve created so they could issue small and quick episodic content to Half-Life 2 easily and often. So they only did it twice and have left that game rot for 7 years.Gabe should have SteamOS shined up and ready for the Linux mouthbreathers sometime around 2027.

They developed Steam three years before Half-Life 2 and the original idea was to update the Counter-Strike expansion for the original HL, which was proving more popular than the game itself because of new maps, new game play, etc. HL2 was the first game that required Steam and it was used as an auto-update client so Valve could add more video card support and patches back in in the day when it was extremely likely a game you bought wouldn't play on the PC you wanted to play it on. It morphed into an episodic game delivery system, used much better by other companies, but the original idea was to cut out the delays for customers in getting the latest patch. For online game play, like Counter-Strike, it helped create a baseline for client systems so users couldn't take advantage of exploits in earlier, unpatched systems.

I was the greatest CS player in my office until they started enforcing patching.

And as far as digital delivery systems - it's better than Origin and it's better than GFW. Hell, it's better than most older content protection systems that came with physical media. It doesn't limit how many computers you can download the games to - it just doesn't let you play them on more than one at the same time. That's an even trade-off. I've never had to worry about Steam games running on a new computer I bought because of licensing issues.

BumpInTheNight:Telos: In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Yah because having all 18 of Office's stupid little obscure apps along with every other executable in one gigantic unsorted tile set resembling an detonated skittle bag is so great. The superior Start Menu from 7 had a self learning 'commonly used' section front and center and then an organized tree to hold all those bullshiat apps you use once a century, and it also featured a search by typing right there as well. Sure Metro would be okay for people who barely scratch the capabilities of a computer, but anyone doing any real amount of work on a system has enough apps installed that the flat sprawl gets hideous.

"Unsorted" being the biggest issue for me. The part where the Start Screen insists on taking up the whole screen? Okay, yes, less than ideal and a big downside, but that might have been survivable if they hadn't also prevented you from making more than one layer of sub-folders. What the fark is the point of disallowing that?

Right now, my start menu has several basic categories for first-level folders (Audio, Internet, Games, General, Maintenance, Video, etc.), then sub-folders within that. Makes it a lot easier to find what I need. With Windows 8 I can't do that. I'm expected to go hunting through several screens of unrelated crap.

Limiting folder complexity and making the whole thing take up the whole screen are bad enough by themselves. Combined? Nuh-uh, not even trying. Try again.

Geotpf:My home desktop computer has Windows 8 (my old one took a dump and I was too lazy to build one from scratch and got a good deal on a floor sample). It works fine for what I use it for-running games from Steam and surfing the web. I can tell it would be horrible if I needed it for anything else, though.

Aaand this is how its done, folks.By ones & twos,The hundreds and thousands.The stars wink out.Minds succumb to soft machine,creators now obey and serve.In a starless void.

yukichigai:BumpInTheNight: Telos: In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Yah because having all 18 of Office's stupid little obscure apps along with every other executable in one gigantic unsorted tile set resembling an detonated skittle bag is so great. The superior Start Menu from 7 had a self learning 'commonly used' section front and center and then an organized tree to hold all those bullshiat apps you use once a century, and it also featured a search by typing right there as well. Sure Metro would be okay for people who barely scratch the capabilities of a computer, but anyone doing any real amount of work on a system has enough apps installed that the flat sprawl gets hideous.

"Unsorted" being the biggest issue for me. The part where the Start Screen insists on taking up the whole screen? Okay, yes, less than ideal and a big downside, but that might have been survivable if they hadn't also prevented you from making more than one layer of sub-folders. What the fark is the point of disallowing that?

Right now, my start menu has several basic categories for first-level folders (Audio, Internet, Games, General, Maintenance, Video, etc.), then sub-folders within that. Makes it a lot easier to find what I need. With Windows 8 I can't do that. I'm expected to go hunting through several screens of unrelated crap.

Limiting folder complexity and making the whole thing take up the whole screen are bad enough by themselves. Combined? Nuh-uh, not even trying. Try again.

I'd expect at some point they will bring that back, because even on my iPhone you can make a folder and put 8 things in it. This:

Is not realistic. I had to take three screenshots on a 1920x1200 monitor to get all of them in (the cat face is duplicated on the right because it didn't fill an entire screen). You can argue that I should go through all the icons and remove the ones I don't need, but how the fark is that an improvement? What you're seeing on that screen was 10 root folders in Windows 7 that branched out based on categories I created. Now I've got three full monitors worth of icons to pick through.

Lsherm:yukichigai: BumpInTheNight: Telos: In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Yah because having all 18 of Office's stupid little obscure apps along with every other executable in one gigantic unsorted tile set resembling an detonated skittle bag is so great. The superior Start Menu from 7 had a self learning 'commonly used' section front and center and then an organized tree to hold all those bullshiat apps you use once a century, and it also featured a search by typing right there as well. Sure Metro would be okay for people who barely scratch the capabilities of a computer, but anyone doing any real amount of work on a system has enough apps installed that the flat sprawl gets hideous.

"Unsorted" being the biggest issue for me. The part where the Start Screen insists on taking up the whole screen? Okay, yes, less than ideal and a big downside, but that might have been survivable if they hadn't also prevented you from making more than one layer of sub-folders. What the fark is the point of disallowing that?

Right now, my start menu has several basic categories for first-level folders (Audio, Internet, Games, General, Maintenance, Video, etc.), then sub-folders within that. Makes it a lot easier to find what I need. With Windows 8 I can't do that. I'm expected to go hunting through several screens of unrelated crap.

Limiting folder complexity and making the whole thing take up the whole screen are bad enough by themselves. Combined? Nuh-uh, not even trying. Try again.

I'd expect at some point they will bring that back, because even on my iPhone you can make a folder and put 8 things in it. This:

[imagizer.imageshack.us image 800x200]

Is not realistic. I had to take three screenshots on a 1920x1200 monitor to get all of them in (the cat face is duplicated on the right because it didn't fill an entire screen). You can argue that I should go through all the icons and remove the ones I don't need, but how the fark is that an improvement? What you're seeing on that screen was 10 root folders in Windows 7 that branched out based on categories I created. Now I've got three full monitors worth of iconsshiat to pick through.

Can't justify switching to Windows 8 due to the backdoor features installed that allow certain entities access to your machine. Till they get rid of that, never touching 8, or any other "new" windows for that matter.

Though it may come down to actually modding the software to remove those security vulnerabilities.

/worst ones are the hardwired vulnerabilities on some new motherboards

Telos:In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Psst, Ballmer's out on his ass, and the armistice has been signed. You can put down your sword and Banzai flag and come out of the woods.

Ruiizu:Can't justify switching to Windows 8 due to the backdoor features installed that allow certain entities access to your machine. Till they get rid of that, never touching 8, or any other "new" windows for that matter.

Though it may come down to actually modding the software to remove those security vulnerabilities.

/worst ones are the hardwired vulnerabilities on some new motherboards

JSTACAT:Ruiizu: Can't justify switching to Windows 8 due to the backdoor features installed that allow certain entities access to your machine. Till they get rid of that, never touching 8, or any other "new" windows for that matter.

Though it may come down to actually modding the software to remove those security vulnerabilities.

/worst ones are the hardwired vulnerabilities on some new motherboards

This.

Sad thing is, 98% of users have no idea....they just swallow

Not that I don't believe that some are in there, but are you talking about the one that the German government denied and Die Zeit retracted?

theBigBigEye:Lsherm: yukichigai: BumpInTheNight: Telos: In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Yah because having all 18 of Office's stupid little obscure apps along with every other executable in one gigantic unsorted tile set resembling an detonated skittle bag is so great. The superior Start Menu from 7 had a self learning 'commonly used' section front and center and then an organized tree to hold all those bullshiat apps you use once a century, and it also featured a search by typing right there as well. Sure Metro would be okay for people who barely scratch the capabilities of a computer, but anyone doing any real amount of work on a system has enough apps installed that the flat sprawl gets hideous.

"Unsorted" being the biggest issue for me. The part where the Start Screen insists on taking up the whole screen? Okay, yes, less than ideal and a big downside, but that might have been survivable if they hadn't also prevented you from making more than one layer of sub-folders. What the fark is the point of disallowing that?

Right now, my start menu has several basic categories for first-level folders (Audio, Internet, Games, General, Maintenance, Video, etc.), then sub-folders within that. Makes it a lot easier to find what I need. With Windows 8 I can't do that. I'm expected to go hunting through several screens of unrelated crap.

Limiting folder complexity and making the whole thing take up the whole screen are bad enough by themselves. Combined? Nuh-uh, not even trying. Try again.

I'd expect at some point they will bring that back, because even on my iPhone you can make a folder and put 8 things in it. This:

[imagizer.imageshack.us image 800x200]

Is not realistic. I had t ...

You're correct, God forbid I need to use my computer for what I want it to do. How silly of me. I should have consulted you first. That's what's important.

Lsherm: I had to take three screenshots on a 1920x1200 monitor to get all of them in "

Wow, i'd shoot a monitor that looked like that,with a can of green leaves.

Text Lists, no icons, very small print. Tiny icons, each is a separate universe.since i speed read... any clutter in a folder makes me uptight. [no folder trees, thats what arrows are for]

Got a netbook with w-7 & their dam folder trees & icons, i'm just gonna wipe it off the machine.w-7 full of back doors too.

I can't fathom how people can put up with the huge cartoon like icons, charms, and tiles, let alone folder views that are not very adjustable.Work = 10 tiny folders 30 x 120px with lists, open all at once & still room for a doc + edge views of the trees. Must have the Green Trees! I'd be totally slowed down if i had to dismiss 2 or 4 folders eating up the whole screen to see some others.

Sytherek:I run three monitors under Win 7, with a half-dozen apps running simultaneously. Work great in Win7. Anybody doing something similar in Win 8?

Yep. 8.1. Pinned commonly used programs to the task bar, which mirrors the task bar on every screen. Much less mouse movement to get to a task bar app. Right click on the app on the task bar to open a second instance. Commonly have about 30 windows open in a day.

Really like some of the diagnostics tools built in. Fairly useful. I'd have a tough time going back to Win 7 actually.

Not that I don't believe that some are in there, but are you talking about the one that the German government denied and Die Zeit retracted?

Not aware of that one, if the German govt was willing to blow the whistle on IE, and now, some crap in a 15 gb os from the usa,Good :(It could be the Germans who get Linux into greater desktop use.msft is wearing pretty thin in Europe. probably 75% of the nations are planning to ditch the bit h msft.Thanks! Obama! Really, Thanks!But, i would hesitate to trust a German Linux.

JSTACAT:Lsherm: I had to take three screenshots on a 1920x1200 monitor to get all of them in "

Wow, i'd shoot a monitor that looked like that,with a can of green leaves.[img.fark.net image 410x307]

Text Lists, no icons, very small print. Tiny icons, each is a separate universe.since i speed read... any clutter in a folder makes me uptight. [no folder trees, thats what arrows are for]

Got a netbook with w-7 & their dam folder trees & icons, i'm just gonna wipe it off the machine.w-7 full of back doors too.

I can't fathom how people can put up with the huge cartoon like icons, charms, and tiles, let alone folder views that are not very adjustable.Work = 10 tiny folders 30 x 120px with lists, open all at once & still room for a doc + edge views of the trees. Must have the Green Trees! I'd be totally slowed down if i had to dismiss 2 or 4 folders eating up the whole screen to see some others.

I don't even know what you're trying to sell with that post. Drink more.

yukichigai:Right now, my start menu has several basic categories for first-level folders (Audio, Internet, Games, General, Maintenance, Video, etc.), then sub-folders within that. Makes it a lot easier to find what I need. With Windows 8 I can't do that. I'm expected to go hunting through several screens of unrelated crap.

Thank you! Some moron up-thread said if you're visually looking through the start menu you must be a casual user. LOLWAT?

I don't say this with pride but of the 20 hours I'm awake a day, I spend about 15 of them in front of a computer. I have dozens of programmes installed in my home computer, some of which I only need to use on a very rare occasion for a very specific use. I have about 20 different video ripping, editing and converting programmes installed. Hell, I have nine different media players* installed. I can't remember the name of all of them, good organisation through folder structure and a visual search is required.

There also always seems to be a few shills who clasp their hands to their bosoms and complain about tortuously wending their mouse through the impossible "narrow channels" and "tiny print" of the start menu. Funny they don't complain about having to do this on the menus of installed software, which are smaller than the start menu. I can only imagine that when forced to use a mouse they can do nowt but stare forlornly at the desktop, crippled by their inability to reliably click on anything smaller than an inch square.

LesserEvil:Please stop arguing that Windows 8 (and we are talking about the Metro UI here) is great, too... if it was, in any measure, than Ballmer would still be in charge, and the team responsible for Windows 8 would still be around. It was a mistake, plain and simple, and a decade or two from now, after the fallout has finally settled, it will be chronicled by those involved as a big mistake.

Or in other words, Windows 8/"It's not called Metro anymore" is the new "New Coke". Yes, while the products themselves are good in a limited use case scenario (Metro makes sense for tablets), replacing the established, well-loved flagship product with them was an idiotic move.

MrSteve007:LesserEvil: By the time XP rolled out, all the driver issues that plagued Win2k got ironed out.

I take it you never played much with XP 64bit? That version never got upgraded past SP2 and driver support *is* still a nightmare on that version. Everyone who is raving about XP SP3 are running workstations that are still 32 bit. *shudder*

Are you sure you're not the one who's never played with XP x64? I ran it on my Sager laptop (yes, a laptop) from the Beta days and never had driver support issues, save for Apple devices. Until 7 released it was also my main desktop OS, again with no issues. I'll admit that in the early days finding x64 drivers was difficult for some things, but once Vista hit it was barely an effort to find drivers. 9 times out of 10 you could just download the Vista x64 driver and use that without issue.

LesserEvil:WinXP was released as hardware vendors started making drivers for "NT" - and yes, those drivers worked in Win2k, too. XP **WAS** a refined version of Win2k. It had a "hipper" windowing UI, which made it more familiar to Win9x users. Over all, it was more comfortable to jump into. A lot of the acronymity against XP was due to the "Genuine Windows" authentication nonsense.

XP was basically the anti-ME: it combined the good features of 2k and 9x and eliminated most of the bad ones.

Man On Pink Corner:Telos: In other words "it's different so it's bad, I want the exact same thing as before. Change is bad." Sorry, but the old start menu sucked horribly. The new start menu (aka Metro Desktop) is much better in that you don't have to sort through tiny folders to find what you want, and even if you don't see it you can type to search.

Psst, Ballmer's out on his ass, and the armistice has been signed. You can put down your sword and Banzai flag and come out of the woods.

Save your breath. He's going to die old and grey and wrinkled inside a booby-trapped cave on a forgotten island that the Japanese formally acknowledged belonged to the US more than five decades ago. Metaphorically speaking.

yukichigai:Are you sure you're not the one who's never played with XP x64? I ran it on my Sager laptop (yes, a laptop) from the Beta days and never had driver support issues, save for Apple devices. Until 7 released it was also my main desktop OS, again with no issues. I'll admit that in the early days finding x64 drivers was difficult for some things, but once Vista hit it was barely an effort to find drivers. 9 times out of 10 you could just download the Vista x64 driver and use that without issue.

LesserEvil: WinXP was released as hardware vendors started making drivers for "NT" - and yes, those drivers worked in Win2k, too. XP **WAS** a refined version of Win2k. It had a "hipper" windowing UI, which made it more familiar to Win9x users. Over all, it was more comfortable to jump into. A lot of the acronymity against XP was due to the "Genuine Windows" authentication nonsense.

XP was basically the anti-ME: it combined the good features of 2k and 9x and eliminated most of the bad ones.

Dude XP 64bit was garbage, just because your pre-configured laptop worked with it doesn't discount anything. The reason it was garbage because it was shoehorned in and you had to verify that every device you had was compatabile and most drivers were never made for it or if they were made they barely worked at best. I had to make 1 PC for someone years ago and they wanted 64bit because they wanted a lot of RAM and that thing was painful to work on.

Again Xp was great after 2-3 years after it was released which is pretty damn close to what 8 is now.

But, Ballmer's out and Gates is apparently taking a closer personal interest in the company.

I've not used a Windows 8 device, and, to be honest, the advertising campaign raised red flags. It suggested that Windows 8 would provide the same experience on all devices. And that's farking stupid. I don't want my desktop computer to have the same interface as my mobile phone.

Apple did have a thing going on for a little bit, where they emphasised that the iPhone ran OS X, but they got their shiat together and renamed their mobile OS iOS.

Yeah, I'm providing no sources, but I've also heard that MS intends to put 8 behind it ASAP, and move on to 9. But, it's always been the way with MS, hasn't it? Vista was dogshiat, Windows 7 was usable.

/Was is not MS-DOS 4.0 that used to wipe out your sexy 100 Mb hard drive for no reason?

That's the thing. My phone is awesome, not because it has a great user interface but because it fits in my farking pocket yet still manages to perform a worthwhile subset of the tasks I would otherwise do on a PC. The touch interface is simply the most practical way to work within the constraints of the form factor, but without those constraints, a mouse and keyboard are far superior.

I could be wrong, but I thought that Windows NT, which gave rise to all of MS's modern OSs, was largely coded in Germany.

Thats a new bit of info for me, and very interesting. I will add this factor to many different mind files and see what develops.It means that America is "subservient" intellectually in a major field. Makes me want to take it [NT] apart bit by bit...Nahh too much time, i will compute the effects working with images.NT has numerous built in doors as well, but seems more controllable than newer windows versions.I really -HATE- the mft, in windows, that should be easy to wipe on a regular basis, but it isn't.It just keeps getting fatter like a red faced German bartender.

The psychology of the Germans is interesting, They have a special touch with tech of all kinds.If we don't watch out, they will end up with their fingers in everyone's pie, in a dominant sort of way.The EU is a good example.And now windows.... somehow, i feel disappointed in America, like we didn't win the war... we got "infected" and they are our invisible, inevitable rulers.OTOH, i am German.... WTFexplains a lot, nationally and personally.Machines, physics, tech in general come so easily to me its like climbing a tree, done with little effort, little study,, for fun. Did i get that from ancestry?Yikes!

JSTACAT:Fissile: JSTACAT: But, i would hesitate to trust a German Linux.

I could be wrong, but I thought that Windows NT, which gave rise to all of MS's modern OSs, was largely coded in Germany.

Thats a new bit of info for me, and very interesting. I will add this factor to many different mind files and see what develops.It means that America is "subservient" intellectually in a major field. Makes me want to take it [NT] apart bit by bit...Nahh too much time, i will compute the effects working with images.NT has numerous built in doors as well, but seems more controllable than newer windows versions.I really -HATE- the mft, in windows, that should be easy to wipe on a regular basis, but it isn't.It just keeps getting fatter like a red faced German bartender.

The psychology of the Germans is interesting, They have a special touch with tech of all kinds.If we don't watch out, they will end up with their fingers in everyone's pie, in a dominant sort of way.The EU is a good example.And now windows.... somehow, i feel disappointed in America, like we didn't win the war... we got "infected" and they are our invisible, inevitable rulers.OTOH, i am German.... WTFexplains a lot, nationally and personally.Machines, physics, tech in general come so easily to me its like climbing a tree, done with little effort, little study,, for fun. Did i get that from ancestry?Yikes!

Again, I'm not certain that Windows NT was coded in Germany, but that's a story I was told once a long time ago. Perhaps someone knows the real story behind it?